Detroit has declared bankruptcy. The images and descriptions of the city evoke a wretched ghetto. Meanwhile, if you cross the border to Windsor, Ontario you find a relatively nice place.

Both cities have economies heavily invested in automobile manufacturing. Both cities also have various welfare systems available. They are both rife with municipal regulations. Canadian and American cultures are fairly similar.

So what’s the big difference?

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing lists about $18-20 billion worth of debt. Even if you low-ball it, this amounts to debt of about $26,000for everyone in Detroit. This is a city where the average per capita income is a pathetic $14,700 per year.

Windsor’s debt is around $115 million. They have about a third of Detroit’s population. Windsor’s debt per capita is $545 only.

Debt is not bad. The key is to use the debt for something productive. Since all government spending is inherently wasteful, cities should spend as little as possible and minimize their debts. Otherwise they will become Detroit.

On April 4, CMR asked if the Canadian government would have a Cyprus-like response to a banking crisis, as was implied by the language of pages 144-145 of the new budget.

The government is trying to assure us now that they won’t steal your deposits to prop up an insolvent bank. Yet Mark Carney himself wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

“Canadian institutions have substantial unsecured debt obligations in the wholesale market and as well as other classes of capital, and they have substantial capital as well, so once you stack all of that up, regardless of whether one would look to reach into it … it’s hard to fathom why it would be necessary,” the Bank of Canada governor said.

“Hard to fathom”? That is not exactly what I’d call “comforting language.” Especially because this is from a guy who is wrong nearly every time he opens his mouth.

He admitted the queue of capital buffers for banks would likely include some types of deposits, but did not elaborate.

Yet Carney also referred to a response from Flaherty’s office, which stated:

“The ‘bail-in’ scenario described in the budget has nothing to do with consumer deposits and they are not part of the ‘bail-in’ regime. Under a ‘bail-in’ arrangement, a failing financial institution has to tap into its own special reserves or assets (which it has been forced to put aside) to keep its operations going.”

“Nothing to do with consumer deposits.” Okay.

Remember Rockwell’s Law: always believe the opposite of what state-officials tell you. If they say you have nothing to worry about, then you should start worrying.

But let’s say for the sake of argument deposits are supposed to be excluded from any proposed “bail-in” scenario. What is the bank going to do? Canadian banks are capitalized about as well as Lehman Brothers before things went bad.

Consider TD. They have $818 billion in assets. They have $768 billion in liabilities. Very little equity is available to withstand losses in asset value or income. All the big Canadian banks are like this. A tremendous amount of special reserves need to be put aside to withstand even a 10% drop in the value of a Canadian bank’s assets.

There will be more crises. Canadian banks cannot survive a crisis without a government bailout. Don’t take any comfort in anything coming out of Ottawa and the BoC.